DDoS Attack on German Energy Company RWE

Protesters in Germany have been camping out at the Hambach Forest, where the German energy company RWE has plans to mine for coal. Meanwhile, it’s been reported that RWE’s website was under attack as police efforts to clear the protesters from the woods were underway.

According to Deutsche Welle, unknown attackers launched a large-scale distributed denial-of-service (DDoS), which took down RWE’s website for virtually all of Tuesday. No other systems were attacked, but efforts to clear away the protesters have been ongoing for the better part of the month, and activists have reportedly made claims that they will be getting more aggressive in their tactics.

Activists have occupied the forest in hopes of preventing RWE from moving forward with plans to expand its coal mining operations, which would effectively clear the forest. In addition to camping out in the forest, the protesters have reportedly taken to YouTube to spread their message.

Reports claim that a clip was posted last week by Anonymous Deutsch that warned, "If you don't immediately stop the clearing of the Hambach Forest, we will attack your servers and bring down your web pages, causing you economic damage that you will never recover from," DW reported.

"Together, we will bring RWE to its knees. This is our first and last warning,” the voice from the video reportedly added.

DDoS attacks are intended to cripple websites, and the attack on RWE allowed the activists to make good on their threat, at least for one day.

““This is yet another example that illustrates the DDoS threat to [softer targets in] CNI [critical network infrastructure]. RWE is an operator of an essential service (energy) in Germany. The lights didn’t go out but their public-facing website was offline as a result of this attack,” said Andrew Llyod, president, Corero Network Security.

In a recent DDoS report, Corero researchers found that “after facing one attack, one in five organizations will be targeted again within 24 hours.”